


Get in, Loser

by spaceboy



Category: Gretchen Lowell Series - Chelsea Cain
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:52:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboy/pseuds/spaceboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie and Gretchen go to an adult store. Literally that is the entire story. No, wait, there's also a handjob in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get in, Loser

Nothing had been right since the island. Henry and Claire had enough to worry about with the baby due soon, but Archie had trouble believing that was the only reason they were acting a little distant and stiff to him lately. He shouldn’t have told Henry about the phone number. Of course, he’d probably be dead if he hadn’t. But he got the feeling they were fed up with him now, that Henry wasn’t quite sure helping him all this time was paying off. He was probably projecting though. They were just busy. He was just thinking of the things they should be feeling toward him, and because of that, he increased the distance between them. 

It should have gone better with Susan. They were both available, and they both knew that they were both interested. But it didn’t happen. But she had picked a direction, a book to really finish this time for sure, and she was focused suddenly and obsessively on it, fixed on the idea that having that direction would mean she was safe now. She tried, though. She pulled herself away from her laptop in the first week Archie was out of the hospital, and made her way to his apartment to fill it up with the smell of peppermint and try to kiss him while he lay unresponsive on the couch and tried to figure out how to make her leave without insulting her before she realized he was high as balls on oxycodone nobody knew he had. She stopped kissing him after a minute and sat on the edge of the couch pouting at him. 

“You could try.”

That was all she had to say, and then it wasn’t about him being high anymore. It was about how she had seen the tape and what she had thought of him for it and said about it and how he hadn’t even been able to rescue her, fucking Gretchen had done it while he’d been passed out useless on the floor and most of all wasn’t it funny that he had had the gall to think he could say he was “available.” 

He started laughing, and he knew that was the wrong thing to do but it was funny and he was high and he couldn’t stop, and Susan left and for the first time since they’d met, he had spent a whole month without getting a call from her.

It was almost as if getting drugged and sexually assaulted was the kind of thing that should be taken seriously instead of leading everyone to act embarrassed about it and to blame him for ever having slept with her in the first place. It was almost as if both of them had been through enough trauma in the last few years that they really desperately needed some intense therapy and weren’t getting it. 

So when he found the note, there was no one to call.

That was a lie. Henry still would have picked up. And he could always call 9-11, like a normal citizen. But it made it easier to think that he didn’t tell anyone because he had nobody left to tell. 

He should have noticed the scent as soon as he walked in the door. Maybe he was too used to imagining it to realize that this time it was really there. He stopped to pour the dog some food before heading straight to the bathroom cabinet. The pill box in his pocket was empty. It had been empty for hours. He hadn’t calculated well this morning. He opened the mirrored cupboard. 

The row of pill bottles was there, but the one space he was automatically reaching for was empty. There was a piece of notebook paper folded over and taped to the inside of the cupboard door.

That was when he smelled the lilacs. That was when he should have called someone. But he knew that even if things hadn’t been wrong lately between him and the rest of the world, he wouldn’t have called.

He peeled the tape off the door and unfolded the paper.

“Stumptown Annex, 4:30. I’ll get you home by midnight. In one piece. Cross my heart.”

He checked his watch. It was still stopped. For a while he had thought that if he kept wearing it anyway it would remind him to get a new one. It hadn’t worked out that way, and now he was just left wearing a useless thing because it was habit. He held the paper carefully and went out into the kitchen to look at the clock on the stove. 4:08. It wouldn’t take him more than twenty minutes to walk to the Annex, a small café attached to the roastery and main offices of the local coffee chain. That was sure cutting it close, though.

She knew when his shift was over and when he would get home. He realized it and accepted it at the same time. Funny, though, since they were looking for her in New Mexico. He wasn’t sure why, but that’s what he had heard. 

He hadn’t taken his coat off yet. The dog was fed. There was really nothing to do but walk back out the door, leaving a sad, confused, unwalked corgi behind him. 

It was dark, but it had been dark all day. It hadn’t rained in days, but the sky was so deeply blanketed with clouds that it had looked like evening since noon. For all that, it wasn’t very cold, and he was carrying his jacket under his arm by the time he reached the big grey brick building. The downstairs windows were dark, the chairs were perched upside down on the tables, and the lettering on the windows said they closed at three. There were a few cars parked out front, employees or patrons of the other businesses nearby, but they were all unoccupied and there was no one out on the street. He checked his watch again. It was still unhelpfully broken. But his sense of time insisted he was there on the dot. What if he was wrong? What if he had missed her? His stomach clenched at the thought, but he didn’t know for sure yet, he told himself. He would hang around for a few minutes at least, now that he was here. He stood stupidly outside the locked door of the café for a minute, then decided to walk around the block in the meantime so he wouldn’t look too suspicious. 

As soon as he rounded the corner he saw her car. The red shine of it looked like something out of a different world from the dull slate grey of the building, the street, the sky. Everything was uniform but the car. His stomach relaxed, and so did his jaw, which he hadn’t even noteced he’d been clenching, and his shoulders, which he hadn’t noticed had been braced against the possibility that she wasn’t there. 

The passenger-side window rolled down as he approached. He leaned against it, arms folded on the windowsill. “The pills? Really? Not the most compelling hostage you’ve ever used.” He tried not to look at her, but she was as overwhelming as the smell of lilacs in the small space of the car. He breathed her in with it, let her image and her presence wash over him.

“It got you here.”

“I’m not getting in.”

“Oh, all right.” She pressed a button and the window under his arms started to rise. 

“Hey!” he pulled his arms and head out of the shrinking space of the window, knocking his head on the top of the door. 

She took her finger off the button and the window stopped with a few inches to go. “Did you have something else to say?”

“Over 50 children have been killed by power windows since 1990.” The fact popped out of his mouth before he could think about it. It was obvious who he had learned it from. He put a hand over his mouth, an instinctive and useless gesture as if he could lock the words away after they had already gotten out.

“Wrong answer.” She hit the gas and pulled out into the street. The purr of the engine grew to a growl as she accelerated, rounded a corner and was gone. He ran halfway down the block and across the street after the car, but it was long gone. He slowed to a walk, then turned and re-crossed the street, breathing heavily from the short exertion. He was not in good shape, but he figured he was still at a point where he could blame it on having been shot recently. There were a couple of metal patio tables in front of the café, chained to the wall, covered with droplets of condensation. He lay his coat down on one of the tables and sat on it, waiting there to catch his breath before he walked home. He couldn’t believe he had blown it that quickly. He didn’t even know what it was he had blown. Seeing her. That was all, really. He didn’t care what she was there for. He just wanted to see her. 

He also wanted his damn pills back, especially now that he was sitting on a cold wet table feeling like he’d just ruined something important, with the old injury in his throat and the new one in his side hurting like fuck from his brief attempt at athleticism. 

There wasn’t much traffic, and so even though he was looking down at the concrete, he could hear the sound of a car a little nicer than the others pulling over in front of him. His head jerked up and he half-fell off the table onto his feet. He grabbed the damp coat and ran again, only a couple steps this time, and this time it was worth it because the car was there, right in front of him, she had come back and he wasn’t letting her go again. 

Just like she wanted, of course. 

He yanked the door open, more roughly than he needed to, a dead giveaway that he was desperate.

“Get in, loser,” she said. “We’re going shopping.” 

He got in, and barely had time to shut the door before she took off. “Oh, so this is when the real torture starts.”

“I think you’ll enjoy it.”

“Really.” It was her plan; the chances of him liking it were virtually nonexistent. He opened the glove compartment and found the missing pill bottle waiting for him, a bottle of water in the cupholder. He swallowed a few pills and tucked the bottle safely away in his pocket. He glanced out the window. They weren’t heading out of the city, as he’d expected. They were headed right toward downtown, and only a few minutes later she pulled into a Smart Park garage, took a ticket and drove through the spiraling aisle, passing several almost empty floors before finally parking, the sole car on the roof level. He threw a few nervous looks between her and the concrete barrier at the edge of the roof as they got out of the car. 

She laughed at him, took his hand and led him toward the stairs at the corner of the building. He stopped. She tugged on his hand. “Come on, what is it now?”

“This is downtown. That’s Powell’s. Right across the street.”

“Yes. And?”

“You can’t be here. You – your face is on that billboard!” It was true. A billboard on a building towering over the garage sported an ad for the Beauty Killer Tour, her face plastered across it. (Parking;lot across from restaurant )

“Mm hm. And how many calls do you get a week claiming to have seen me? And how many do you ignore because they’re obviously just seeing murderers in every attractive blond? And how many do you ignore because I’m supposed to be – where am I supposed to be now?”

“New Mexico.”

“Exactly. People stare at me, they wonder, but anyone who could do anything about it won’t, because profiling is bad business when the profile is white and blonde.”

He didn’t like the logic. It didn’t quite add up, and he couldn’t quite convince himself that she wasn’t just trying to get him out in public with her because it would look bad for him, almost as bad as it actually was. But she had been in town a while, apparently, if she had been watching him long enough to know his schedule and plan something for him. And what was he supposed to do now? Just sit on the roof and refuse to go down? “All right.” He let her lead him down flight after flight of stairs. Even going down, he was panting by the time they reached the bottom, and trying not to look like he was. She knew everything else that was wrong with him, he knew he didn’t have to hide any of that, and yet he could still be embarrassed that she was fit and gorgeous while he was letting himself fall apart in every way.  
They walked up a block on Burnside, hand in hand on the crowded street. Archie flinched every time someone walked past too close to them. He had been too worried about her getting recognized to think, until they were already on the street, of how much more likely it was that they would run into someone he knew. He lowered his head to stare at the ground as they went, and moved closer to her as if she could hide him from view. He tried to walk faster, but she wouldn’t have it, keeping a deliberate pace and a tight hold on his hand. It turned out they weren’t going far, though. She stopped in front of a shop. “Would you get the door, darling?”

He opened it without looking up, not sure where they were, just glad to get in out of the open, and so it wasn’t until she had gone through and he followed her in that he understood where they were. 

“Nope,” he said, and turned around to go right back out the door. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close to her. 

“You don’t want me to have to make a scene, do you?” she whispered. “You’re being ridiculous. Relax. Normal couples do this all the time.”

“Everything all right?” said an employee, watching from the counter. 

“Oh, yes,” said Gretchen. “He just gets embarrassed about these things.”

“Well, nobody here’s judging you.”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to tell him. Thank you. Come on, darling.” She dragged him past rows of corsets and lingerie and sickeningly familiar sexy nurse costumes, and through a curtain into the next room. 

He had been in these places before, but only briefly, with a couple of other guys just to grab as many ridiculous lewd things as they could for Henry’s last bachelor party, or following close behind Debbie as she beelined for a vibrator and tried to act like it was no big deal as she grabbed it and paid and got out again. So he had never quite grasped the full extent of what was in here. The wall to the left was completely lined with packaged penises in every color and a variety of sometimes terrifying shapes and sizes. He found himself moving even closer to Gretchen, and partly behind her. His hand squeezed hers a little more tightly and the other hand moved to hold onto her arm. 

“They’re not going to hurt you. They’re locked up safe in boxes.”

He shrugged and tried to stop cowering behind her. “I just . . . can people actually use these?” His eyes were wide, staring at an iridescent eighteen-inch long dildo.

“Would you like to find out?”

“No!” The word came out too high pitched, and he flinched in embarrassment at it.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “I think you’re more scared of them than you are of me. Clearly this is a partnership that needs to happen.” She stepped in front of the wall, and put a contemplative hand to her chin to consider the options. “I need that arm, darling, can you let it go for a minute? I’ll be right here, the scary artificial dicks won’t get you.” She smirked at him and he let go and shoved his hands in his pockets so he could just stand awkwardly without doing anything else embarrassing. She picked up a box, opened it and took out a small, smooth, light pink dildo. 

“Hey, that’s not safe and locked up in a box.” 

She wrapped her hand around it and slid the hand slowly up and down it. He shook his head in disbelief that he was standing here doing this with her, and then looked away so he wouldn’t have to watch any lewd acts with a disembodied pink dick. Looking away didn’t help though, because the next minute she was holding it up to his face. “Hold it.”

“No.”

“It doesn’t bite.” She took his hand and wrapped it around the thing. It felt surprisingly smooth and kind of soothing to hold. She kept her hand around his to keep it there. “I can’t believe you can be so crass about drugs and violence and still can’t handle normal nice sexual things. And that is what’s wrong with society these days.” She took the dildo back from him and slid it back into the box. “I think this’ll do to start you with.”

“Me? No, wait, what are we doing?” She had moved on, though, farther down the wall to look at a bunch of sets of straps with rings attached. It took him a minute to figure it out. Harnesses. For the dildo. He hurried after her and grabbed her arm again. “What are you doing with this?”

“You.” She took one of the harnesses off a hook, inspected it with pursed lips, held it up against her hips and nodded approval of it, all while Archie stood stupefied.

“No,” he finally said.

“What makes you think you suddenly get to say no? Come on, though, maybe you’ll feel more comfortable over here.” She led him down to the other side of the room. He was surprised to find she was right. The assortment of merchandise was different over here. Lots of black and silver. Leather and metal. Things that looked like they were supposed to hurt. And it was all much more comforting than the outwardly sexual things had been. He managed to move a step or two away from her and actually look at the things, not just glance at them sidelong while trying to not look at all. “Better?” she said, watching as he relaxed just a little.

“Yeah, actually. God, I’m a mess.”

“But you’re my mess!” she said brightly. She ran her hand over a row of floggers, picked up a small, light one, and immediately turned around and whacked him on the ass with it. 

He didn’t even flinch at the contact. He frowned in momentary confusion at the brief sting. “Seriously?”

“Not quite what you’re looking for?”

He looked around, scanning the rows of crops, paddles, gags and clamps, and laughed. “I’m not sure you can really impress me with anything here. You pulled out all the stops too soon, sweetheart. Now this all just looks kind of cute.”

She hung the flogger back on the hook and examined some of the others. “It does. But we’re going to need a few things that won’t put you in the hospital if we’re going to do this regularly.”

“Are we?”

“Yes. Anyway, I think you might be underestimating these things just a little.” She picked up another flogger with longer, thinner cords and small metal spikes at the end. He tried to back up, but was only fast enough to throw off her aim, and the tips smacked against his thigh. 

“Fuck,” he hissed, eyes squeezing shut against the much harder impact, but managing to keep his voice down, scared of drawing attention to them.

“See? That could get interesting after a while, couldn’t it?” 

“Yeah. Fuck.” 

“You said that already.”

“It still applies.” The sensation hadn’t faded immediately; it got worse for a second before it started to ebb off.

“Good.” She hung onto the spiked flogger while she moved on, to stroke a crop before picking it up. He was faster this time, and backed up to put a shelf between them. She shrugged, took careful aim, and hit herself in the leg with it instead. She smiled and added it to her armful. “You don’t have to try out everything in advance. Surprises are good too.” She moved along the wall, and picked up a couple of packaged things that he couldn’t quite see from where he was, and joined him after a minute. “What are you looking at?”

“Oh, um, nothing.” He had forgotten that he was looking at anything; he thought he was just hiding, but he was hiding and very specifically looking at the shelf in front of him.

“Oh, that’s sweet. You could have just asked if you wanted one.” She followed his eyes to a certain spot on the shelf and took a black collar with a large silver ring off it. “This one?”

“No, I don’t, um, I don’t need – ”

She knotted a hand tight in his hair and forced his head around to look at her. “If you want something, darling, you need to ask for it.”

“Okay,” he said, voice strained from dealing with her pulling on his hair.

“Well?”

“Can I have it?”

She raised her eyebrows and waited.

“Please?”

She smiled and let go. “Of course you can. I think that’s everything. Shall we go, then?” He didn’t answer. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and he was staring at her, breathing too fast and too shaky. “What is it?” She moved cautiously toward him, and when he didn’t bolt she set down her armful of floggers and packages and wrapped her arms around him and pressed his head against her shoulder, stroking his hair. “It’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” He stayed stiff and shaking there for a minute, then slowly loosened till he took his hands out of his pocket and held her back. 

“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “In the basement . . . you made me ask . . . . so I panicked . . . .”

“I know. Don’t be sorry. You’re just being what I made you. You never have to be sorry for that. It’s what I want.” He nodded his head against her shoulder. “Ready to go now?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She let him go slowly and gathered up the things. He took out the pill bottle while she did, but then hesitated. “Can I have another?” he asked, holding up the bottle. 

“Of course you can. You can have as many as you want.”

“You’re doing it on purpose now,” he said, popping a pill in his mouth and swallowing it dry.

“Doing what?”

“Trying to set me off.”

“Who says I wasn’t doing it on purpose before?” 

“I hate you.” 

“No, you don’t.” She took his hand and they went back into the front room. 

“All set?” said the girl behind the counter, looking up from the back of a porno case she was examining rather intently.

“I think so.” Gretchen deposited the stack of stuff on the counter, and Archie hung around nervously next to her as the girl rang it up and put everything in a blank black bag. 

“Wait,” Gretchen stopped the girl before she put the collar in the bag, and smiled at Archie. “Do you want to wear it out?”

“What? No. No, that is not happening.”

She put her arms around his neck and leaned in close. “It’s only a block. It’s dark out, nobody’s going to pay any attention. Do it for me, darling?”

The girl behind the counter tried not to get involved, but she couldn’t help it. “It would be adorable. You two are so cute.”

“Thank you.” Gretchen smiled at her and the girl blushed. She turned back to Archie. “The pretty girl thinks you should.”

Archie could feel his own face going redder than the girl’s. He just wanted this to be over. “Fine.”

His eyes closed as he felt her hands against his throat, wrapping the collar around it, her cheek pressing against his as she reached around to fasten the buckle at the back of his neck. It cut in just a little too tight as she did so, but then loosened to a comfortable snugness once it was fastened, just close enough to know it was there, like she was still holding on to him even after she kissed him on the cheek and stepped back to look him over. The girl behind the counter was grinning. Archie looked down, trying not to look like he was going to die, and Gretchen reached out to stroke his face. “It’s lovely.” He let out a breath and leaned against her hand. It felt a little more all right now. Nobody was laughing about it. They were both just happy with him. 

Gretchen finished paying and took the bag, then hooked a finger through the ring on the collar and tugged. He followed her out onto the street and down it, while she kept a loose hold on the ring. He stuck close to her and kept his head down and hoped she was right about nobody noticing, but he didn’t mind as much as he thought he would. It felt good, letting her lead him along, not that she wasn’t doing that anyway, wasn’t always doing that, but it felt like he could acknowledge it now, give in just a little more, be more at ease with it. It felt like an extra layer between them and everyone else. It felt safe. 

She let go when they reached the parking garage, and he hung back so she could go up the stairs first, so he wouldn’t have to make an awful sight of himself trying to do it. He tried to keep up with her for the first couple of flights, but fell further and further behind. He could barely breathe when he reached the top. She was waiting for him at the top. He stepped out onto the roof and she grabbed him by the collar, yanked him a few stumbling steps to the side and shoved him against the barrier at the edge of the roof. It would have knocked the wind out of him if he had had any wind left after that climb. Instead it just hurt, the top of the ledge hitting him right in the gut, which really couldn’t take a lot of damage at this point after the amateur surgery and the infection and the gunshot. She pushed him farther forward, too far to keep his footing. He was doubled over the barrier, half hanging off it, overbalanced. She held on by the collar and the back of his shirt. He grabbed onto the barrier as best he could, but it was wide and concrete and a bad angle to get any leverage from.

“Let go. Put your hands behind your head.”

Shit, no, he was not fucking letting go while he was half dangling off a roof six stories up. He couldn’t tell her that, though, with the collar half-cutting off his hair from being one of the only things holding him up. 

“Is this really the point where you want to start arguing?” she said. Yes, yes it fucking was. 

She let go. Just briefly, just long enough for the world to tilt and his stomach to clench and adrenaline to shoot through him as he felt the beginning of a drop, and then she grabbed him again and he choked at the jerk on his throat as she caught hold of the collar again.

“Let go.”

She wasn’t going to really drop him. He was sure of that. Mostly sure. But he didn’t want to test her. It took a minute to force his hands to move, but slowly he managed to take them away from the barrier and move them to the back of his head.

“Thank you. Now. We need to talk.”

He made a strangled guttural noise, the closest he could come to talking without being able to breathe properly.

“You’ve been scared all day,” she said, accepting the noise as his contribution to the conversation. “But not of the right things. You’re not afraid of me. You’re afraid of looking bad in front of me. You’re afraid of looking weak or vulnerable, you’re afraid to tell me what you want. Why?” 

He made another choking noise, and she adjusted her grip, letting go of the collar and holding on around his waist instead. He gasped and coughed, out of breath from the stairs already and then from the choking. He coughed harder and his stomach lurched and he sincerely hoped he was not about to vomit on downtown Portland from several stories up. But he kept it down and after a few minutes he stopped coughing and pulled in enough breath to talk, with long gasping pauses between the sentences.

“I am scared of you. I sleep with the light on. And I leave it on when I’m out. You probably noticed while you were breaking in.”

“Yes, that was very convenient, thank you.” 

“But it doesn’t matter if I’m scared of you, because I know there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m scared, but I accept it. I don’t worry about it. What I worry about, what really scares me, is that after all this you might get bored. Might decide you’ve done all you want with me, and push me off a roof in some sick anticlimax and walk away. Or just disappear one day and not come back this time. I’m more scared of you leaving me than of anything else you could do to me.”

“You’re so stupid sometimes, Archie. Everything I’ve done was supposed to show you that I’m not going to do that. From the very beginning; don’t you remember? It’s only you, darling. And when I kill you,” she whispered, leaning in close, her breath warm in his ear, and he’d been doing so well till now, why the fuck was that what had him suddenly hard? “When I kill you, it will not be like this. It will be exactly as painful and exactly as personal as you expect. You’ve been so good for so long; you deserve nothing less.” She yanked him suddenly back from the ledge and let go; he stumbled backward and fell hard on the concrete. She stepped over him and opened the door of the car. “Come along, then.”

“Wait.” He sat up and looked up at her from there, while she turned back to look down on him with an impatient shake of her head. 

“Yes?”

“You’re wearing me down. I know that’s the point, but are you sure you’ll still want me when I stop fighting you?” It had been eating at him, ever since the island, that one worry keeping him awake at night more than anything else, that he would finally give up and beg her to take him away and that when he did, he wouldn’t be interesting anymore and she would leave.

“Oh, darling.” Her face softened and she bent down to put her arms under his and help him up to his feet. She pulled him close and he put his arms around her. “Of course I will. You must be so tired. Whenever you’re ready to rest, I’ll have you. You just have to accept the consequences.”

He pressed her back against the car and kissed her, relief at the answer washing over him, and leaving him unable to handle her touching him anymore without doing something. She let him, kissed him back and ran her fingers gently through his hair before grabbing it tight. The other hand unbuckled his belt, pushed her hand up under his shirt and traced the scars, then traced along the waistband of his pants. She pulled his head back away from her. “Do you want me to help you with that?”

“Yes, please.” He didn’t know why he stopped her so often. It seemed inappropriate. Which it was, but it was a ridiculous line to draw considering everything else that went on between them. He heard an engine and opened his eyes, focusing over her shoulder at the headlights turning onto the roof, another car coming up to park here. “Not here,” he said, and tried to pull away, but her grip on his hair tightened and she slipped her hand into his pants and wrapped it around his dick, holding just a little too tight. She pulled him closer against her, and he could only gasp and move where she wanted him.

“It’s dark. Nobody’s looking. Relax.” He heard the car park across the flat roof from them, heard the doors open and footsteps on the ground, but she was holding onto him and her hand started to move, loosened and started to stroke him and he couldn’t help but relax. She would take care of everything. 

“Do you need me to talk about killing you? You seemed to like that.”

He didn’t answer; he was shaking to keep his balance and he pressed his face into her neck, kissing it and breathing in the lilacs. She pushed his head harder against her. “Bite me.” He didn’t hesitate; he opened his mouth and bit down where her neck met her shoulder. “Mm.” She tensed just a little and her hands gripped him a little tighter. He shuddered and clung onto her, his jaw clenching harder on her neck and his hands clutching at her shoulders and her hair. “You’ll be so good for me before I kill you. You’ll be beyond begging to die; you’ll only beg for more pain, because you know hearing it will make me happy.” 

That was all it took, and he came, clinging to her with hands and teeth. He would have been embarrassed that that he only needed a couple of minutes and a couple of sentences, but just being with her was almost enough and she had been there for an hour, talking to him, touching him, reassuring him that she would keep being there. 

She held him for a few more minutes, petting his hair as he kissed gently over the spot where he’d bit her. Then she gently took her hand out of his pants and pulled his head back to where she could kiss him. “Let’s get you home, darling.”

She held his hand on the drive home and pulled him over to kiss him again before she let him out in front of his still brightly lit apartment. “I’ll let you know where to find me next time. We’ve got to put our new toys to use.” She slipped a hand around to the back of his neck to unclasp the collar. He had forgotten about it; he would have gotten out of the car and gone home with it still if she hadn’t taken it off. He deflated a little as the weight lifted from his neck. It felt so secure; he didn’t want it to be gone. The disappointment must have shown. She set the collar on the dashboard, undid the first couple buttons of her shirt and put her hand inside, pressing against the heart-shaped scar on his chest. “You don’t need that. You have this. It’s always there. You’re mine. Always.”

“Thank you,” he said, very quietly, wishing he wasn’t so honestly grateful for it. He got out and watched her drive away, and then went upstairs and into the lighted apartment. He remembered to eat food. He took the dog out. And when he went to bed, this time, he slept well.


End file.
